Shush stepped outta de shop feelin pretty gud about all de sellin stuff
he did. Shush were gettin lotsa shiny gold pieces for all de glowy stones he
found. Shush wasn’t sure what to do wit all de gold doe. Den Shush had an idea.
Cause see Shush’s clanky clothes got all banged up from all de skeletons an
stuff, an it was real uncomfortable. So Shush found a buildin wit a picture of
clanky clothes on it, an he went inside.

The shop in question,
notable for looking exactly like every other shop in the imperial city.

“Welcome to The Best Defense!” said a dark-skinned man in clanky
clothes. “I’m Varnardo, I handle the heavy armor here. How can I help you?”

“Shush got hit a bunch, and now dis is all smooshed an stuff” Shush
said, banging his fist on his chest. “Can he buy a new one?”

“Oh, well certainly sir” said Vernarder, “but even with dents that
deep, I can always just repair your armor for you.”

“You can make it not all bumpy?” Shush said hopefully.

“Of course” said Varnarnda. “It’d probably be cheaper than buying a new
chest plate too. And if you’re versed in armor repair yourself, I sell repair
hammers. Might not be cheaper than paying me to do it at first, but it’s a
useful skill to learn.”

“How do Shush use de hammers?”

“Well that’s a complicated question. Proper technique takes time and training,
and I’m no teacher in repair. The basic idea is to hammer out the dents, but of
course there’s far more to-“

“I’ll take one a dem repair hammers.”

Veranda shrugged. “If you say so.” He handed Shush de hammer an Shush
gave him some gold. Den Shush walked out.

***

Varnardo shook his head once the strange orc left the store.

“Bit of a strange one, eh Varnardo?” said his coworker Maro Rufus from
across the room.

“No argument here” said Varnardo. “Not exactly the brightest sounding
orc either, between you and me. But what can you do, adventuring takes a lot of
strange types. Glad my father talked me into more stable trade as a lad.”

Maro nodded and leaned on his counter. “And I’d imagine you get even
more slow customers than I do, since they all make their living hauling giant
slabs of metal around.”

Maro frowned and blew a lock of his mangy brown hair from his eyes.
“Look, just because you’re angry with training in a defunct school of armor
doesn’t mean-“

*CLANG*

Both armor salesmen winced, and their heads jerked toward the door.
There was a brief silence, before Varnardo spoke up. “You don’t think
that’s...”

*CLANG*

“Sure sounds like it” said Maro, standing up from the counter and
walking towards the door. He cracked it open just a bit to peek through as
another peal rang through the store.

*CLANG*

“Yup, that’s him” said Maro, grimacing and closing the door. “Sitting
in the street right outside the shop. A bright orange, shirtless orc smashing a
tiny hammer into his breastplate. His technique seems a bit...rusty. Even for a
metal-head.”

*CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG*

Varnardo ignored Maro and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Doesn’t seem
to be stopping. Do you think I should go out and-“

*CL-SNAP*

“Oh good, seems to have solved itself.”

***

Shush frowned at his broken hammer. It didn’t last very long. Shush
were just gettin de hang of de smash-fixin too. Shush made almost as many new
dents in de clanky clothes as he started wit, but he was just figurin out how
to not do dat when de hammer went all snappy. Shush sighed but den he saw
somethin cool. Dere was a barrel right near Shush, and Shush saw another one a
dose fixy hammers innit! Shush walked over to de barrel and opened it up,
pickin de hammer out.

Den Shush had a thought. Dis barrel may have belonged to a person dat
wasn’t Shush, and Shush didn’t want to get thrown in jail again. Last time was
borin and smelled. Shush yelled over to a person walking by.

“Hey you! D’you know if any people own dese crates an stuff?”

“W-what?” said de guy. “I uh, I don’t know, those are today’s shipments
probably? This late in the day they should be empty of anything important...”

“So Shush can take whatever he want from here?”

“Huh?! N-no, I didn’t say...nevermind.”

Shush wasn’t really listenin to de guy anymore, he was busy lookin in
all de barrels for fixy hammers an other cool stuff. Shush liked how much free
stuff dere was in de big city. Den Shush searched de barrels on de other side a
de street and found even more hammers n tings. Shush took a long time fixin his
clanky clothes. It was sorta like smashin people, except instead a people it
was a metal ting, and de smashes was real tiny.

Now might be a good time
to discuss durability. Durability is a mechanic in some games where equipment
like weapons and armor degrade over time. If you don’t repair the equipment,
usually through paying someone, then it gets worse or outright ceases to
function. Personally, I don’t like it much as a mechanic. At absolute best, it
provides some basic management and prep work to keep track of. I understand
that can be fun, but I prefer my management gameplay to involve choice,
tactical thinking, or even any thinking at all. With durability, it’s
completely binary. It’s always a good thing to have repaired equipment, and
most games have it cheap enough that it’s never worth it to ignore doing so.

The repair interface
for Oblivion. You just click on the equipment and it increases its durability,
with a chance to break one repair hammer.

As is the case with a lot
of Oblivion’s mechanics, durability is implemented in a somewhat bothersome way.
Equipment condition isn’t binary, meaning that if you’re on the right side of
rounding your weapons or armor can be worse from taking or giving a single hit.
This continual damage is merely annoying until you get into really high levels,
when it gets unbearable. A friend of mine played Oblivion until high enough
level that every fight his armor would break in a few hits, and the best weapon
in the game would break shortly afterward. At master skill level, an armorer
can use a repair hammer an infinite amount of times, and long before that the
cost of them will be completely trivial. Hell, Shush already has enough money that they’re trivial. Oh, and the repair
hammers break at random, which is more of a personal annoyance, but an
annoyance all the same.

So the repair system in
Oblivion isn’t a big deal. But it’s largely worthless in terms of engaging
gameplay, annoying and arbitrary until it’s trivial and arbitrary, and
completely breaks down at high levels. So old man Genericide finds another mechanic
to shake his fist at, but what else is new. Let’s get back to Shush.

It was gettin dark out and Shush was almost done fixin up his clanky
clothes when some guy walked up to him. Shush didn’t even notice him until he
started talking.

“Uh, excuse me?” he said.

*CLANG*

“Sir?”

*CLANG*

“I NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU!”

Shush looked up. “Oh, hello dere loud person. Shush didn’t see you.”

“Yes, well...I have a message for you, from my master Umbaccano. He has
a job offer for you, and would like you to meet him at his manor in the Talos
Plaza District.”

Shush was thinkin for a second. “So, he wants to give Shush gold for
doin’ somethin?”

So den de guy took Shush across de city to a real fancy big buildin an
Shush went inside. Den another guy took Shush up some stairs to a room dat had a
elf in fancy clothes innit. De fancy elf was sittin at a table wit some statue
on it. His hair was real funny.

Like, wow. Just wow.
What do you even say to hair like that? It makes it really hard to take elvish
Jimmy Neutron here seriously.

De hairy elf spoke up. “Ah. Thank you for coming. You may recognize
that statue over there on the table. The very one that you recently sold – for less
than its true worth. As you may know, I am somewhat of an enthusiast for Ayleid
antiquities. In my-“

“Shush didn’t know.”

“What?”

“Shush didn’t know dat. Dat you liked eye-lead antiquilts.”

“I mean, I didn’t...” De elf waved his hand. “Not important, forget it.
Where was I?”

“You was right here, sittin in dat chair.”

De elf squinted at Shush. “No need to get smart with me, you...actually
probably didn’t intend that, did you? Regardless!”

De elf cleared his throat. “In my own modest way, I have amassed a
rather considerable collection. I have recently become interested in obtaining
the complete set of these ancient statues. I believe that ten still exist. No
mere shopkeeper knows their true worth. If you bring them to me when you find
them, I will pay you double for each one.”

Shush thinked out numbers in his head, den smiled. “Oh, double is like
twice as many golds, yeah?”

“That...is the definition of the word double, yes. In addition, if you
can actually manage to bring me all ten of the set, I will double your previous
payments.”

“Dat’s a lotta doubles.”

“Indeed. So do we have a deal?”

Shush pointed to de statue. “Shush just gotta bring you more a dose?”

The statue in
question, in all its fuzzy-textured glory.

“Correct! The Ten Ancestors. Are they not exquisite? The way they catch
the light, the perfect cut of their shining gemstones, oh they are just-“

“ ‘sokay.”

“Ahem. Okay?”

“Yeah, dey kinda shiny. But once Shush saw a statue dat was even more
prettier den dis one. It was of a lady wot looked pretty.”

“Yes thank you very much, I’m sure the artistic community would applaud
your critique” said de elf, standin up suddenly. “But I’m afraid our time
together is up. Enchanting meeting you, remember to get me more statues,
Jollring show him OUT, please!”

As de door slammed behind Shush he was feelin pretty good. Shush were
just out of jail and already he were havin two different jobs to do. Shush’d be
sure to look real careful to see if any statues showed up.

I’m going to interject
for a moment to just spoil the suspense: This won’t come up again for some
time. Umbaccano doesn’t suggest places to look until after you get him a second
statue, and despite checking every ruin I passed there were a whole lot of
not-statues inside. That’s not to say we’ll never see mount hair gel again,
just don’t expect it soon.

Thinkin about de jobs dat Shush had to do reminded him dat he still had
to get de shiny stone onna string to dat Joffers guy. So Shush decided to leave
de city an walk out towards where he was s’posed to be. Dere were some wolves
and people askin to take Shush’s money along de way. Cyrodil seems to have a
lotta dose. But Shush smashed em an nothin else interestin happened until Shush
got to a big buncha buildins down de road. Dere was a guy out front a de
buildins so Shush asked if he knew where a guy called Joffers was.

“You seek father Jauffre?” said de guy. “He should be right inside the
priory up ahead, on the second floor reading, probably.”

As a brief aside, let me
just clarify that I did a bunch of things on the way to Weynon Priory. You can
just fast travel between major cities in Oblivion, but I’ve generally found it
more enjoyable to walk and explore along the way unless my inventory is full of
things I need to sell. However, I’m going to skip a lot of dungeon runs and
side trips that aren’t important. Running
through three perfunctory, bland forts in succession on this path reminded me
that there isn’t much to say about segments like these.

So Shush went inside and up de stairs where dere was a bald guy readin,
and figured he must be Joffers. Shush waved to him and walked up to de table he
was readin at.

“Hey, are you Joffers?” Shush said.

“I’m Brother Jauffre. What do you want?”

Brother Joffers, in
the flesh.

“Shush is s’posed to give you somethin, hang on.” Shush started
searchin through his pack for de shiny stone. He knocked a couple skulls out
while lookin.

“Uhh...” said Joffers, eyes kinda big.

“Not dose” Shush said as he found de shiny stone. He pulled it out and
showed it to Joffers. “S’posed to give you dis.”

“What” said Joffers all quiet. “Could that really be...the Amulet of Kings?
Gods above, how did you get this?!”

“A man in fancy clothes gave it to Shush. He said I needed to give it
to de Joffers guy, who’s you, and somethin about shuttin jaws and oblivious.
Den he got killed by guys in red robes.”

“W-what? You can’t mean...the emperor? The emperor is dead?!”

Shush nodded, pleased dat he got it. “Yup, dat’s de guy.”

“Mara have mercy...this is all very sudden.” Joffers looked at de shiny
stone in his hand for a moment. “I’m not sure what the part about jaws means,
but I think I know why he told you to come here. I know some sensitive
information. If the emperor trusted you, then I suppose I can as well.” Joffers
took a deep breath. “The emperor...had a son.”

“Well sure, lotsa people got sons, specially old people.”

“No, you don’t understand. The emperor had a son no one knew about! An
illegitimate one, which he asked me to deliver somewhere safe when he was a
boy. As the only heir to the throne, he could be in terrible danger. And even
though I’m unsure what they mean, those other words sound portentous. We may
need an emperor before long. You see, it’s speculated by scholars that-“

Shush kinda stopped listenin after a while. Joffers talked a lot wit a
buncha big words and it was real borin. After a couple minutes Joffers paused
den started speakin again.

We’re really not missing
much with the background dialogue, in case you’re wondering. I gave the essentials;
the rest is not directly saying, but “foreshadowing” as heavily as possible in
50 foot neon letters: “GET EMPEROR OR ELSE DEMONS.” Bam, entire plot of the
game summarized.

“Anyway, that’s why it’s vital that we find the emperor’s son. Can I
trust you to find him? I’ll offer help in any way I can, and there are some
supplies in that chest.”

Shush looked at de chest behind him. Dat sounded pretty gud, so he
opened it up and found a buncha weapons inside.

Shush started grabbin de weapons. “Cool, Shush can take all a dese?”

“That’s not exactly what I said but...well, better safe than sorry I
suppose.”

“So,” said Shush as he stuffed some longswords in his bag, “where do
you want Shush to go again?”

“The emperor’s son is named Martin. He serves Akatosh at the chapel in
the city of Kvatch. Kvatch is southwest of here, more towards the coast. Have
you got all that?”

“Yup” said Shush, pickin up his pack at wavin goodbye. “Gotta find
Martin, he at de church by de coast place, see ya!”

“Wait, it’s not right on the coast, you-“ was what Joffers was sayin
when Shush went out de door. Shush didn’t know what he was gonna say, but Shush
was pretty sure it didn’t matter. Shush knew what he had ta do, so he walked
back to de city to find a boat to take to de coast city. Shush was gonna find
dis Martin guy in no time flat. He had a super gud memory.